The present disclosure relates to a communication environment, and more particularly, to providing improved apparatus and methods of distributing content to networked devices, communication devices or mobile devices.
Mobile operators or wireless network carriers play a major part in the telecommunication industry today. Initially, such mobile operators concentrated their efforts on generating revenue by increasing their subscriber base. However, it will be appreciated that in several countries the scope for increasing the subscriber base has now become very limited, as the market has reached close to the saturation point. As a result, the mobile operators have been branching into providing value added services to subscribers in order to increase their revenue.
One manner of generating increased revenue is through the sales of premium content items to users, such as ringtones, wallpaper, games, etc. . . . These content items may be provided by the mobile operator, or by business entities that may operate in collaboration with the mobile operators. In an aspect, for example, the content items may be available for download to a communication device of a user upon payment of a fee.
Computing platforms for mobile devices or communication devices tend to impose limitations upon installation and use of content items. Generally, the user interface, available storage, and usage paradigm assumes that each type of content item is handled in the same way (e.g., having a default storage location) by a default application, which typically is installed by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). For example, a short audio file is stored by the file system of the communication device with other short audio files for subsequent playback by a ringtone application. Another type of longer format media content can be specified for storage for playback by a music or video player, for instance.
Thus, improvements in installation and usage of content items are desired.